SiliconBeat

Last month, I served as one of several judges for the TeleWho? contest being held by Plantronics. The idea was to solicit ideas for a term to replace “telecommuter” with something that reflected the way the digital era had changed our work habits.

Today, Plantronics announced the winner: Cloudworker!

According the Plantronics press release, the winning submission defined a “cloudworker” as:

“somebody who uses on-demand technology and collaboration tools, such as unified communications, to work anywhere and anytime, and uses the resulting freedom to enable a my-size-fits-me career path and lifestyle. The metaphor of the cloud extends well beyond cloud computing and software as a service applications to include work environments, distributed teams, and communication tools.”

The winner of the contest was:

Venkatesh Rao, a blogger at www.ribbonfarm.com and research scientist at a Fortune 500 company who divides his time between Rochester, N.Y. and Washington, D.C., submitted the winning term. For his creativity and ingenuity, he will be receiving approximately $2,000 in communication and audio entertainment prizes.

Not bad. Congratulations to Rao. And nice work by everyone who participated.